Is Your Business Without Direction?

Forming and building a business from the ground up is far from an easy task. Reaching the necessary scope of potential clients and proving why your business is better than a competitor’s is another difficult task entirely. True, we all start with a mission, an idea, a concept of how we can change some aspect of society’s common everyday lifestyle, whether it be digitally, socially, or with physical products to sell.

Yet often after taking the first steps in developing our business, we may find ourselves lost and without direction, not knowing why business hasn’t been going the way we hoped or confused as to what the next steps should be.

An infographic by i-nexus Strategy Execution Software introduces the concept of Hoshin Kanri, a Japanese term regarding the ideas of a compass and its management, in other words managing ones direction, used by many business owners to establish the wisest and best next step in the process of business.

Select, Develop and Deploy Objectives

The main core of this six-step Hoshin Kanri process (processes 2, 3 and 4) revolve around the idea of objectives: their selection, development, and deployment.

To begin with, each business should have a few high-reaching goals to aim for in the long-term, yet it’s important to note that while these goals should be difficult and complex to attain, they must remain realistic, plausible and possible. From the third step onwards, the Hoshin Kanri process introduces a yearly time frame in which yearly objectives are set and worked towards, executing activities that help your business reach those goals within the allotted time frame. Lastly, and arguably most importantly, comes the annual review in which a company analyzes how close they were to reaching their goals, learning from possible mistakes and then forming new goals for the next yearly cycle keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of the past year.

Method of Planning

While parts of this process may seem somewhat obvious, they are actually not as simple as they seem.

The 12-month cycle is repeatedly stressed, however the first three months or so should be spent in the planning stages, developing objectives and determining the necessary courses of action to take to reach such goals by the end of the 12 months.

Though not necessarily explicitly stating each and every step to take to create a successful business, Hoshin Kanri provides a formulated method of planning to provide some direction capable of keeping your business on track.

Examine, on the infographic, the different aspects of blog posting to determine which characteristics essentially create “the perfect blog post”. Such a journey through what makes a certain blog come across better than a competing blog comes with the fact that currently there are hundreds of millions of blogs available to the general public about virtually every topic, both professionally and informally written, contributing to an increasingly overwhelming prospect of how to make your blog stand out amongst the rest. So, what are the common trends among successful blogs?

Impressively enough, on average, high ranking blog posts contain a large number of elements within each single post. Concentrating around 1150 words per article, an inordinately large percentage of blogs, 95% and 72%, respectively, to be exact, contained social media buttons, such as Facebook and Twitter, and featured open sections for public comments. What I found most surprising however was that on average almost 10 links (9.96 is the exact count) are embedded within each post to let a blog’s audience reach out to more content related to the subject matter.

Other fun little quirks about blog posts is that the average article contains around three images, pictures which serve to quickly maintain a possible dwindling audience member attentive to the topic at hand without feeling overloaded with too many words. Overall, some of these statistics may or may not seem a tiny bit daunting when thinking about how much goes into a simple article, yet without a doubt these blog tricks make your audience seem more immersed within the topic, convincing them of the validity of your argument.

Social Media the Gateway for a Business to Get More Clients

For those of us who are slightly more old-fashioned in our ways and hesitant to put ourselves out on the web to gain exposure for our business, actively participating in social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can seem like a daunting task. Yet in an increasingly digital world, social media, if utilized correctly, can be the gateway to tons of audience exposure for a business seeking more clients. In fact, the infographic below titled “10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Can’t Ignore Social Media” (though I think a more appropriate name would be “10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Ignore Social Media”) showcases a number of ways as to how social media is more beneficial than problematic.

Social Media and Website

Somewhat a given to social media users, outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites not only increase the exposure that a site or business can receive but consequently produces an increase in traffic as well, as confirmed by 76% of interviewed businesses. A benefit that some people may not think about at first is improved search rankings. It was observed that “the more time spent on social media the better became the rankings” for a website, as more keywords were generated and more visits were garnered. Such an occurrence can do wonders for increasing business flow as, undoubtedly, websites on a more prominently viewable location on search engines have a greater chance of reaching new costumers than sites lower down on the list.

Making Your Business Known

It goes without saying that the more you and your business put yourselves out there, the greater the chance of receiving positive rewards with your efforts. Even large companies like Burger King and Red Bull spend billions of dollars marketing on different social media platforms to create fan followings, offer interesting promotions or contests and at the same time branding their names and becoming more and more well known in the process. So don’t let the seemingly daunting world of social media get you down: chances are your business will experience great improvements!

Productivity Versus Efficiency

We all know that productivity and efficiency contain certain keys for success: maximizing the time at hand not only gets you from one project to the next on time but allows sufficient time to finish each task fully and completely. However, as much as some of us may be career-driven people dedicated to our work, we’re only human and sometimes we can tend to check out of reality when tired and not up for the tasks at hand. Khronos Design blog features an infographic by Doug White examining precisely at which times during the day and during our work cycle in which we are most likely to be productive and most likely to become easily distracted and procrastinate.

The Most Productive Day of the Week

One of the things I found most interesting was that based on surveys taken by Accountemps in 1987, 1998, 2002, 2007, and 2013 yielded the same results when asking participants which day of the week is most commonly productive: the answer was Tuesday by overwhelmingly large figures, including a staggering almost 60% poll result from the 2007 survey. So, if you are stressing out about how much you have to do at work or about an upcoming project, Tuesdays usually seem to be the best day to work given that the lazy Monday has passed by and the week gets into full swing soon after. Not surprisingly, almost everyone agreed that Thursdays and Fridays are not the most productive times of the week, as weekend plans and upcoming holidays tend to shift our focus from work to play. Another interesting observation was that the hours of 4 to 6 pm are the worst times of day for work to be done. No doubt the thought of being close to the end of the work day forces many of us into express mode rushing to do whatever outstanding tasks are left so we can get home and relax.

The Best Time For Productivity During the Week

Overall, the general consensus provided by White’s infographic is that the absolute best time for productivity during the week falls between the hours of 10 am to noon on Tuesdays. Despite some people not necessarily being morning persons, the morning hours actually prove to be very useful in accomplishing tasks efficiently and maintaining focus. The lazy bug pinches us all sooner or later, yet if you are able to stick to these suggestions, hopefully some of the stress and pressure will be lifted off your shoulders as you glide through your daily tasks.

10 am to noon on Tuesdays

It’s Your Turn Now

Do you agree with the observations made by Accountemps or do you have other ideas about when to maximize productivity?

As many of us Facebook users know, the newest addition to this social media giant is the Facebook graph search. Facebook graph search is what the creators call the way to “find more of what your looking for through your friends and connections”. Therefore, this is a great, ideal way to make your business known to more and more people on a daily basis! And you’re in luck, cause this infographic by [ http://righton-nobull.com ] tells you just how to do that.

Essentially, the main point to take away from this is that the more content and info you have, the more chances your business will appear often on graph search. My favorite pointer is #4: include important keywords. Because the graph search connects people to specific, topic-related searches, hashtags and keys words and help your business become linked to specific searches using that keyword. But, as the infographic says, that doesn’t mean you should go around hashtaging dozens of words at a time. Just keep the addition of keywords in mind, and I think it’ll really help in the long run.

Always make sure you have content on your business’s page because not only does it enable you to reach out to more people but it also keeps people interested in what you have to offer. Videos, pictures, posts, the more you have, the better! Remember, you want the largest amount of people visiting your business’s page as possible!

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